An image pickup apparatus such as a video camera mostly is used outdoors, and hence, it has frequent chances to encounter rain or snow during shooting. When shooting is performed under such circumstances, water droplets adhere to the image pickup apparatus, which may result in the failure of the image pickup apparatus itself.
In light of the above-described problem, products as shown in Patent Document 1 and Non-Patent Document 1 appeared on the market. Patent Document 1 discloses a case configured so as to cover the entire image pickup apparatus by housing it in a transparent case, thus preventing the adhesion of water droplets etc. coming from the outside to the image pickup apparatus. Non-Patent Document 1 discloses a cover (a “snow/rain jacket ”) that can cover a video camera as an example of the image pickup apparatus from the top, so that the video camera equipped with the cover can avoid the adhesion of water droplets when it rains etc. as much as possible.
According to the configurations disclosed in Patent Document 1 and Non-Patent Document 1, shooting with the image pickup apparatus can be performed even in a light rain etc.    Patent Document 1: JP 2(1990)-111127 U    Non-Patent Document 1: “snow/rain jacket” appearing on page 30 of Union Catalog of Digital Video Camera (issued in October 2003) of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.